The Women Who Dared: A Biography of Amy Levy, by Christine Pullen, Kingston upon Thames: Kingston University Press, 2010, 241 pp., illustrated, ₤20 (paperback), ISBN 978 1 899999 43 9 Reviewed by Theodore M. Porter, University of California, Los Angeles The narrative trajectory of this biography begins and ends with the suicide of the writer Amy Levy at the age of 27 on 9 September 1889. That tragic end gives direction to Christine Pullen’s wide-ranging study of Levy and her
Read moreAuthor: lucinda matthews-jones
Book Review: Victorian poetry when?
Victorian Poetry Now: Poets, Poems, Poetics, by Valentine Cunningham, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2011, xiii + 537 pp., £95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-631-20826-6 Reviewed byEmma Mason, University of Warwick emma.mason@warwick.ac.uk From his work on dissenting religious traditions to the significance of intertextual writing and reading practices and the status of critical theory in literary studies, Valentine Cunningham has shaped for himself a scholarly guise at once robustly intellectual and critically jocose. His critical voice – homiletic and idiosyncratic – resonates with a
Read moreBook Review: Elite Dancing and Dining in London and Paris
Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870-1920, by Theresa Jill Buckland, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 200 pp., £50.00 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-230-27714-4 Bourgeois Consumption: Food, Space and Identity in London and Paris, 1850-1914, by Rachel Rich, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011, ix + 213 pp., £55.00 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-7190-8112-5 Reviewed by Dr Kelly Boyd, Institute of Historical Research, University of London k.boyd@blueyonder.co.uk As Leonore Davidoff showed us in The Best Circles, one of the most difficult tasks in nineteenth-century English
Read moreA Blog on Blogging: Reflecting on the ‘Transforming Objects’ Roundtable
I was recently invited by Nicole Bush (Northumbria) to chair a roundtable discussion at the ‘Transforming Objects’ conference on ‘Single- and Multi-Authored Blogging Models’ (28-29 May 2012). The speakers were Martin Paul Eve (Sussex), Kieran Fenby-Hulse (Bradford), Charlotte Mathieson (Warwick) and James Mussell (Birmingham). I must admit, I felt both honoured and daunted to be chairing the session. The participants are seasoned bloggers and very experienced in using a variety of blogging models. Some of them, particularly Charlotte and James,
Read moreBloggers Fair: North East Nineteenth Century
“North East Nineteenth Century” is the website for the North East Postgraduate Research Group for the Long Nineteenth Century, a group based disciplinarily within literary studies and led by postgraduates from Newcastle, Northumbria and Durham universities. We are a regional research community of postgraduate students working on diverse aspects of the literature, art, culture, and society of the long nineteenth century. Our website is an online resource containing information about members, upcoming events and calls for papers (including our own
Read moreBloggers Fair: Lynne Wilson’s Scotland’s History Uncovered
Scotland’s History Uncovered is a blog which focuses on the social history of Scotland, concentrating on the Victorian era. The object of the blog in essence, is to give an enjoyable learning experience for people of all levels of historical knowledge. Having always had an interest in Victorian history, I wrote a book entitled ‘A Year in Victorian Edinburgh’ to try and give the reader a real feel for life in this time. From there, I decided to develop a blog which I
Read moreBloggers Fair: The Floating Academy
The Floating Academy is a blogging collective. We take our name from the slang expression used to describe the Hulks, those notorious merchant and naval ships that were converted into prisons to ease overcrowded gaols between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. More specifically, we take inspiration from the reference to the Hulks that can be found in Dickens’s Great Expectations, during which Pip is threatened with transport to the Hulks on account of his irrepressible habit of asking questions. We
Read moreBloggers Fair: Emily Cody and Trey Conatser’s Novel Ideas
In short, Novel Ideas stands on the conviction that long-nineteenth-century studies, and, by extension, literary studies and the humanities in general, offer insightful and timely perspectives on current events and debates through the concept of “historical reciprocity”: the idea that the past informs the present just as much as the present informs the past via contemporary biases often channeled into modern interpretations of history. We seek to participate in and bolster interdisciplinary conversations both within and without scholarly and educational
Read moreBloggers Fair: Marcus’s ‘Victorian Circle’
My blog Victorian Circle began in 2009 as an effort to keep my writing and analytical skills fresh while preparing to go to law school. The “Circle” part of the name is meant to bring to mind a discussion, a throwing around of ideas. My goal is to highlight various pieces from the 1830s to the early 20th century. Along with novels, I also write about poetry and social essays. Examples of the topics I have addressed are “A Woman’s Vocation”
Read moreBloggers Fair: Lucy E. Williams and her ‘Wayward Women’
WaywardWomen is a new weekly blog I started writing in April 2012. Posts are all derived from my PhD research into the lives of Victorian England’s Female offenders, in which I examine the who, what, and why of crime in two Victorian cities – Liverpool and London. I examine the life narratives of female offenders in Victorian England, roughly between the periods 1830 – 1911, and assert that to fully understand the relationship between women and crime in Victorian England,
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